Elizabeth Anscombe: Philosophy, Intention, and Morality

Was it right to drop the atomic bomb? Or, put another way, does the choice to kill the innocent as a means to an end always constitute murder? This is the question the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe pressed in a pamphlet she circulated opposing Oxford University’s decision to award an honorary degree to U.S. President Harry Truman, who ordered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She explored the same question in a series of lectures delivered the next year, whose publication under the title Intention has become a classic of 20th century philosophy. Presented as a study of human agency, Anscombe aimed to make sense of the idea that a correct answer to the question “What am I doing?” depends crucially on how the relevant action is described. In directing a pen across paper to produce one’s signature, is one exercising one’s wrist, ornamenting the piece of paper, or signing a directive to drop a nuclear weapon to kill thousands of innocents? For Anscombe, the answer requires first an understanding of the peculiar kind of knowledge that we as agents have of what we are doing—a practical sort of knowledge that, she believes, has been catastrophically overlooked in modern moral theories. But what shapes a person’s intention when they act? And how does an action’s intention, as opposed to its consequences, determine whether it is right or wrong?

This course will undertake a close reading of Anscombe’s Intention in its historical and philosophical context. As we make our way through that “often quoted, sometimes read, rarely understood” text, we will consider the targets of Anscombe’s criticism, found in the moral theories of British philosophers like Henry Sidgwick and W.D. Ross, as well as sources of her inspiration, including Aristotle and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Time permitting, we will also consider the enduring legacy of Intention in the philosophy of action, including readings from John McDowell, Michael Thompson, and others.